Anacortes man to show his rare photos from Vietnam War

ANACORTES - Charlie Haughey tried to go back to college in 1969 after returning home from a 14-month tour in Vietnam.

"People spat at me from across the street and yelled 'Baby killer' when I was walking," he said.

After three weeks, Haughey left and never looked back.

"Vietnam just was not talked about," he said. "It was so controversial, people just didn't touch it. It was kind of buried."

Also buried - in a shoebox in the back of Haughey's closet - were nearly 3,000 film negatives he'd shot while serving as battalion photographer for the Army's 25th Infantry Division.

For nearly 45 years, they stayed in that shoebox while the Michigan native raised a family and worked as a cabinetmaker. He figured his kids and grandkids would find them after he was gone.

"They'll enjoy going through it, I thought, and wondering about things," he said.

Then, in 2012, after retiring and moving to Portland, Oregon, to be near his son's family, Haughey was convinced to share the negatives with photographer Kris Regentin.

With Haughey's permission, Regentin assembled a team of volunteers to begin scanning, restoring and retouching the images, most of which Haughey had never even seen himself.

"I was really bowled over that they were in as good of shape as they were," Haughey said, recalling the first time Regentin showed him a selection of his newly digitized images.

A gallery showing of 28 prints in spring 2013 attracted 1,000 viewers and garnered international press coverage.

"It was just crazy," Haughey said of the response. "I was totally unprepared for the art part of it. I mean, they were record photographs to me."

Regentin and his team established The Chieu-Hoi Project and went on to publish a coffee-table book titled "A Weather Walked In" featuring 117 color and black-and-white images depicting "the life side of the war" rather than the death side.

In 2017, a second exhibit featured 40 more of Haughey's never-before-seen images.

Things have quieted down since Haughey moved to Anacortes with his son's family in 2020, where the now-83-year-old continues to put his carpentry skills to use working on projects around the house and crafting perfectly round spheres out of scraps of wood in the family's garage.

Now, Haughey is set to show a selection of his photos and share stories from his time in Vietnam alongside Regentin at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, June 4, at the Anacortes Senior Activity Center.

During the talk, which is free and open to all, Haughey's book will be available for purchase by donation, with all proceeds going to support the senior center.

In an interview with the American, Haughey recalled a few highlights from his time in the Army.

When he was drafted in October 1967, Haughey was 24 and working at a sheet metal plant after dropping out of college due to the cost.

After completing training, he boarded a flight to Vietnam in March 1968, not long after the Tet Offensive. As most of the other guys slept, Haughey picked at the tape wrapped around a bundle of folders containing his service record and labeled "DO NOT OPEN."

"What the hell are you doing?" his friend Henry asked.

"I just wanna see what they got on me," Haughey responded.

"You'll get in trouble for that," Henry said.

"We're going to the jungles of Vietnam with rifles," Haughey said. "What the hell else can they do to me?"

Written in pencil atop each of three manila folders were the words "Sheet-metal fabricator" and "Cabinetmaker," said Haughey, who borrowed a pencil from Henry and began erasing.

Haughey then handed the folders to Henry and told him to write "Photographer" on each of them.

"Are you nuts?" Henry said.

"Yeah, probably," Haughey responded.

After landing in Vietnam and spending a couple of weeks doing hard labor, Haughey joined up with his platoon outside the wire of Cu Chi Base Camp.

He spent 63 days walking point and flank through the jungles and rice paddies of southwest Vietnam before one day, while relaxing in his bunk on a day off, Haughey was summoned to the captain's hooch.

When he arrived, Haughey saw his service record folders spread across the captain's desk.

"I didn't know where this was going," Haughey said, "but I'd seen enough carnage. I'd been walking damn point and flank and had guys killed on both sides of me out there."

The captain began asking about his photography experience.

Haughey was self-taught, having set up basement darkrooms to develop his own negatives as a kid. As a teen, he shot high school sports. As a young man, he worked processing film strips. He'd also done some photography at his community college.

"If they wanted to take me in and ask me to define the conversion of silver halides in the process of developing a black and white, I'd have said ‘No can do, Leroy, but I can make you a print.'"

Haughey admits he embellished a bit, and the captain was convinced, telling him he'd be replacing the battalion's previous photographer, who'd been badly injured.

He then went to see the colonel, he said.

"You're not a combat photographer," the colonel told him. "You're not Robert Capa. This is a morale job. I want to see my people in the paper. Get them there."

Haughey spent the next 11 months documenting his fellow soldiers and the conditions they faced, as well as the civilians they encountered along the way.

He bought and used Kodak Tri-X 400 speed film in addition to the Army's less reliable "junk," developing it and making prints in a makeshift darkroom inside a shipping container.

"Photographers will tell you that you can't make pictures in 105 or 110 degrees," Haughey said. "But I did.'

He would get ice from the medics and put it in a tray below his developing trays to keep the fluids cool, he said.

While Haughey did his best to write even vague captions for the photos he sent for publication in military and civilian newspapers, he also strived to make images that could speak for themselves.

"I just said, ‘Well, every time I look through the camera, I'm going to try to take a picture that doesn't need a caption,'" he said.

Haughey said he was proud to be documenting his fellow soldiers' lives on the front lines of a war that he and many others did not choose to fight.

"It gave me a purpose," he said. "I had something to do besides go out there and look for a fight."

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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 5:56 PM.